GE Completes $1.06 Billion Buy of Thermo Fisher Units

GE Healthcare has closed on its purchase of three Thermo Fisher Scientific business units, first announced January 6 and widely viewed as a win-win for both parties.The $1.06 billion acquisition allows GE to take over TFS's HyClone cell culture media and sera, gene modulation, and magnetic beads businesses. According to a TFS release, combined revenue of the three businesses was $250 million in 2013. This acquisition will expand GE's range of tools, technologies, and services for the discovery and manufacture of innovative new medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics in its $4-billion-a-year Life Sciences business. In November, TFS was told by European regulators that it had to sell the business units in order to complete its acquisition of Life Technologies Corp. Thermo Fisher had agreed last April to pay $13.6 billion in cash, plus assume approximately $2.2 billion in net debt, for Life Technologies, a diagnostics equipment and supplies maker. Kieran Murphy, President and CEO of GE Healthcare's Life Sciences business said in GE's press release addressing the deal, "Our customers in biopharmaceutical manufacturing will benefit straight away from an expanded range of 'start-to-finish' technologies that will help them improve product yields and reduce time-to-market. Through this acquisition we immediately expand our cell culture media production capabilities in Asia, the Americas and Europe, enabling us to offer the biopharmaceutical industry greater confidence in the security of supply of a key part of their production process."TFS has said that Life Technologies provides innovative products and services to customers conducting scientific research and genetic analysis, as well as those in applied markets, such as forensics and food safety testing. Its offerings include a broad range of reagents, consumables, instruments, and systems. With the acquisition, TFS gains the approximately 5000 patents and licenses that protect Life Technologies' products. With reported revenue of $13 billion, TFS has 39,000 employees and serves customers within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions, and government agencies, as well as in environmental and process control industries. The company says its three brands, Thermo Scientific, Fisher Scientific, and Unity Lab Services, "offer a unique combination of innovative technologies, convenient purchasing options, and a single solution for laboratory operations management."

Stephen Levy is a contributor to Qmed and MPMN.